When individuals investigate a sexual harassment claim that stems from a dissolved workplace romance, their responses to the claim are likely influenced by their ethical standards and legalstandards. We propose a person-situation interactionist decision-making process through which investigators’ ethical standards may override legal standards when responding to social-sexual conduct at work.

We tested empirically whether potential employers require and/or prefer human resources (HR)professionals who hold an HR certification. We analyzed each of 1,873 HR job announcements
available over a one-week period on monster.com, hotjobs.yahoo.com, careerbuilder.com, and shrm.org. Results showed that only 9 (i.e., .48%) job announcements stated that there was a requirement and only 70 (i.e., 3.73%) job announcements stated that there was a preference for job applicants with any type of HR certification. In spite of the low overall demand for certified HR professionals, results indicated that the demand is slightly higher for jobs posted on shrm.org, certain job titles (e.g., HR Director, HR Generalist), HR specialty areas (e.g., employee relations, general HR), industries (e.g., manufacturing), and for jobs requiring more
years of HR job experience. Overall, results suggest that the field of HR needs to do a better job of gathering evidence about validity, utility, and lack of adverse impact regarding the use of
certification in selection and assessment decision making. Once this evidence is collected, employers may perceive HR certification as a more critical signal of a job applicant’s future contributions.

We collected surveys from employees in a large petroleum company in the United States. Results indicated that employees with (a) lower scores on belief in chance (a dimension of locus of control), (b) lower scores on authoritarianism, (c) more positive attitudes toward drug testing in general, and (d) knowledge of fewer individuals known fairly well who have failed a drug test
were more likely to report that their organization’s drug testing program includes positive characteristics. We discuss implications of these findings for theory and practice regarding the implementation of drug testing in organizations.

The authors conducted a 30-year review (1969-1998) of the size of moderating effects of categorical variables as assessed using multiple regression. The median observed effect size of (f2) is only .002, but 72% of the moderator tests reviewed had power of .80 or greater to detect a targeted effect conventionally defined as small. Results suggest the need to minimize the influence of artifacts that produce a downward bias in the observed effect size and put into question the use of conventional definitions of moderating effect sizes. As long as an effect has a meaningful impact, the authors advise researchers to conduct a power analysis and plan future research designs based on smaller and more realistic targeted effect sizes.

We provide a cautionary note on reporting accurate eta-squared values from multifactor analysis of variance (ANOVA) designs. We reinforce the distinction between classical and partial eta squared as measures of strength of association. We provide examples from articles published in premier psychology journals in which the authors erroneously reported partial eta-squared values as representing classical eta-squared values. Finally, we discuss broader impacts of inaccurately reported eta-squared values for theory development, meta-analytic reviews, and intervention programs.

We introduce and provide support for an ethical decision-making framework as an explanation for the social-cognitive process through which observers make decisions about a sexual harassment complaint that stems from a prior workplace romance. We conducted two experiments to examine effects of features of a dissolved hierarchical workplace romance and subsequent harassing behavior on raters’ responses to a sexual harassment complaint. In Experiment 1, results based on a sample of 217 employees indicate that their attributions of responsibility for the harassment mediated the link between their knowledge of features of the romance and three recommended personnel actions. In Experiment 2, results based on a sample of 258 members of the Society for Human Resource Management indicate that their degree of recognition of the accused’s social-sexual behavior as immoral mediated the link between their knowledge of features of the romance and harassment and their attributions of responsibility. Raters’ attributions of responsibility, in turn, predicted three recommended personnel actions. We discuss theoretical and practical implications from an ethical decision-making perspective.